A three-day workshop on differentiated instruction in math, delivered from a desk in California to 500 junior high math teachers gathered in Yogyakarta — and the audience was leaning in the entire time.
How the invitation came in
The invitation arrived through a connection at Marshall Cavendish in Singapore. The team at SEAMEO QITEP in Mathematics had been following Dr. E's work online — particularly his YouTube channel, his flipped-classroom content, and his published research on online math teaching. They wanted those ideas in front of new junior high math teachers across the SEAMEO region.
The setup
Dr. E delivered three days of sessions over Zoom from his studio in California. The audience was all in one room in Yogyakarta, watching him on the big screen. Most of the 500 participants were brand-new junior high math teachers — and they were every bit as engaged as an in-person audience.
I was teaching from California. They were sitting in one room in Indonesia. The screen between us was just a screen — the engagement was real.
The core message
Differentiated instruction works in the online classroom — but only if the platform you're using is built around teaching, not just communication. Zoom is a great communication tool. It is not, by default, a great teaching environment.
The workshop walked teachers through how to differentiate content, process, and product in synchronous and asynchronous online math classes — then handed them the tools to actually pull it off.
Key takeaways from the workshop
- Layout is part of the lesson. A well-designed presentation layout doesn't just look better — it carries information. Zoom alone doesn't give you that. Tools like Ecamm Live turn a stock Zoom call into a real teaching environment with overlays, scenes, and presence.
- Presence online is a learnable skill. Bonus session content focused on how new teachers can show up on camera with energy and clarity even when they can't see their students' faces.
- Practice on day one. Dr. E asked the participants to record a 2-minute announcement video for their own students during the workshop. Most had never done it before. By the end of the session they had their first piece of video content in hand.
What the host said
"Thank you very much for your inspiring session in our course."
Why this one mattered
Three days. 500 teachers. Eight time zones away. The session proved a point Dr. E keeps making: when the teaching is structured well, the medium fades into the background. The teachers left Yogyakarta with the same toolkit a faculty cohort gets in a room with him in California.